Page 6 of The Expat Affair

He stops at the counter for a quick discussion with the girl manning the register, and she points him my way. She knows why he’s here, that it’s me he’s here for. The cop turns, our eyes meet, and I sit up straighter on my chair.

“Arie Boomsma, detective with the Amsterdam Police,” he says as soon as he’s close enough, and in English, thank God. His words are heavy with a Germanic accent. “I understand you were witness to a murder.”

I drop my hand in his outstretched palm, big as a dinner plate, and squeeze harder than necessary because I’ve lived here long enoughto know that in Holland, that’s how you set the tone. The one with the strongest handshake wins, and this guy just won by a mile. I slide my throbbing hand under my thigh, trying not to wince.

“Rayna Dumont. And I’m not a witness, at least not technically. When I walked into the bathroom, Xander was already dead.”

I shudder as the last word leaves my mouth because I was in the same room as a fingerless corpse. I puked a puddle on the marble by his feet. My underwear is still lying somewhere on his bedroom floor. My DNA is all over the scene.

“Do you want to talk here?” He gestures vaguely to the shop behind him, to the people trying very hard not to stare. “We could go to the bureau if you prefer.”

Something about the way he says it feels like a challenge, or maybe it’s my history with interrogation rooms in police stations. Either way, I give an immediate shake of my head.

“Here’s fine.”

Detective Boomsma pats his pockets until he finds the lump he’s looking for, an ancient iPhone with a scratched and cracked screen. He swipes through the apps and taps Record on Voice Memos, settling the phone, screen up, on the bar between us. “Perhaps you could start at the beginning.”

So I do. I tell him about last night’s drinks that turned into dinner that turned into me staying the night. I tell him about waking up this morning to the sound of the shower, and my spontaneous decision to join Xander. About the horror of finding him there—face purple, eyes bulging, tongue limp and discolored from the zip tie strapped around his neck like a tourniquet. I say these words, and it hits me all over again: Xander is dead, and I wasthere.

“You woke up to the sound of the shower,” Detective Boomsma says, “but not the actual struggle?”

It’s a thought that’s occurred to me, as well, and more than once. A man Xander’s size would have put up one hell of a fight. His fall would have shaken the floorboards. I was drunk last night, but I wasn’tthatdrunk. How did I not hear anything?

At the register, an apron-clad cashier puts down the basket of oranges in her hand, watching me with undisguised curiosity. She only heard part of the story when I burst inside, the frantic bits and pieces I relayed to the 1-1-2 operator. Now she’s eager for the rest.

I turn back to Detective Boomsma. “We don’t know for sure that there was a struggle.”

“I’ve been doing this job for long enough to know with absolute certainty that there was a struggle. Any man surprised by their attacker will put up a fight the second he realizes his life is in danger. And Mr. Van der Vos was a large man. Well over two meters. How much do you think he weighed, ninety kilos?”

Ninety kilos is some two hundred pounds, which seems about right. But still. The detective seems to be waiting for more from me, an estimate, maybe, or a wild guess. This feels like a test.

“Miss Dumont, how much did Mr. Van der Vos weigh?”

I clear my throat. “I couldn’t say. Our activities didn’t exactly include a weigh-in.”

The detective quirks a brow, but he’s wise enough not to touch that one.

“Regardless, it would have taken a lot of muscle to overpower a man his size, which means his attacker must have been just as large, and while the struggle might have been quick, it certainly wouldn’t have been silent. There would have been shouts. Grunts. Bodies slamming against walls, falling to the floor. A fight to the death between two ninety-kilo men. You can see where I’m going with this.”

Yes, I can see where he’s going, and I know how this looks. A strange girl sleeping in a man’s bed, oblivious while he’s beingtortured to death in the next room. It looks like I’m lying, or at the very least, hiding something.

I shut my eyes and try to picture how it happened. Xander’s body slick with soap, his handsome face tilted up to the spray when someone came up on him from behind.

“Maybe he was washing his face,” I say, opening my eyes, “or, I don’t know, rinsing the shampoo from his hair. Maybe he didn’t know what was happening until there was a zip tie strapped around his neck andboom, no more air. And you can stop looking at me like that, Detective, because I promise you there’s not a woman on this planet who doesn’t think someone will choose that exact moment when she’s rinsing the soap from her eyes to rape or stab or strangle her.”

The girl behind the register catches my eye, and I can tell she agrees.

Detective Boomsma lifts a neutral shoulder. “That is all possible, yes, but one of the bodies still crashed to the ground. It’s strange that you didn’t hear it.”

My cheeks go hot because the detective’s point is valid. Itisstrange. All those minutes I wasted pacing Xander’s floor, trying to make sense of the fact that he was dead, trying to cram that awful fact into my brain, I was too stunned to think this very thing. How did I not hear his big body fall?

“I already told you we’d had a lot to drink. We went to bed really late and I’m a hard sleeper. There’s a solid wall separating the bedroom from the bathroom. Whatever noise Xander made in there, I didn’t hear it over the shower. Or maybe I heardsomething, because I remember startling awake. Something woke me up.”

“A thud? A shout?”

“A thud, maybe. I think I would have remembered a shout. Or maybe it was a door closing, or footsteps. I wish I could be more helpful.”

I hate the way my voice sounds, so desperate and unsure. I want to go back and try those words all over again, in a calm and matter-of-fact tone. The detective looks like he isn’t buying it, and honestly, why should he? I don’t understand how I didn’t hear anything, either.

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